


moon threads

by Bitterblue



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Character Study, Gen, that's it that's the whole plot, they're both trans, trans twins
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-05
Updated: 2017-07-05
Packaged: 2018-11-23 17:51:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,295
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11407482
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bitterblue/pseuds/Bitterblue
Summary: No one can tell them apart with their clothes on, and that's how the twins like it. (Everyone else invariably gets it wrong.)Trans babies in Byroden, in Syngorn, briefly in Byroden again, and in the woods together.





	moon threads

They're not quite born all tangled up, but they might as well be. They slip into the world in the middle of the night, the candlelight of Elaina's room overpowered by the bright moon shining through the windows. The first doesn't cry until the second arrives, two minutes later.

"Are they alright?" she asks the midwife, breathless.

"Just about identical, from the looks of them. As close as they could get, a boy and a girl." The midwife and her assistant finish cleaning the pair up, and hand them to their mother.

 

* * *

 

 

No one can tell them apart with their clothes on, and that's how the twins like it. (Everyone else invariably gets it wrong.)

The village they live in isn't the sort that gets fussy about what clothes small children play in, because they're just going to get dirty and outgrown anyway. This works entirely to their advantage, growing their hair to the same length and wearing the same clothes. They never really  _talk_  about it, in the same way they don't talk about having dark hair or the same ghosting of freckles across their noses. One of them is Vex and one of them is Vax, and they know which is which, and that's enough; for everyone else, even their mother, they can be VexAndVax. (She takes the corrections well enough, soothing furrowed brows if she calls one by the other's name and stroking dark hair until their frowns melt away. This, above all, is what they will remember of her.)

* * *

 

 

It's when their father comes and takes them away that it starts to be a problem. Maybe it's that elves are stuffier than humans about this, or maybe it's simply that their father doesn't like that he isn't sure which twin is which when he deigns to notice them. In Syngorn, they can't just be VexAndVax, they have to be  _daughter_  Vex'ahlia and  _son_  Vax'ildan and it grates against their skin. (And their mother is so far away, and she can't soothe them, so Vax learns to braid his sister's hair just like their mother had, and Vex learns to hold him tightly until he relaxes. Only in private, though, where their father can't see.)

In Syngorn, they first have the Dream.

_The woods are quiet and the moon very, very bright as they run through the forest together. The trees almost dissolve as they pass them, fading into the shadows. Scattered across the forest floor, tangled in the roots of trees and caught on rocks, is a skein of golden thread. They run, and it isn't hard. They run, and they don't trip on the thread even when it's pulled taut between trees like a snare. They run, and they don't look to see Her chasing them._

_They know She's there._

They wake at the same time, or close enough, and Vex is shaking with the effort of not crying. Vax crawls into bed with her, another forbidden activity, and slides his fingers through her hair until they both relax enough to sleep, deep and dreamless. 

Before dawn, Vax returns to his own bed and he doesn't even fuss when the servants lay out a deep blue dress for him, or when their father calls him  _Vex'ahlia_  in that tone that he hates (and  _craves_ , and hates that, too) over breakfast.

* * *

 

 

They swap clothes, when they can, because in Syngorn they suddenly have to — no one ever seems to get it right, and all the clothes are fussy and elegant and  _never_  identical like they had before. It's usually the tutors who notice, because Vex is fantastic at sums and history, and Vax is better with writing and art; the switch becomes obvious when they need to play to the other's strengths. 

Their history tutor never seems to mind when they turn up in each other's outfits, or as close to the same as they can get. She is very tall, lean, with an angular sort of jaw that makes Vex's heart race with some unacknowledged and perhaps unknowable familiarity. She calls them by the right names, without their needing to correct her — even when they turn up in the same outfit.

The twins _like_ history.

Syldor dismisses the tutor after he drops in on a lesson to find the twins looking much as they had in Byroden: VexAndVax, dressed identically, eagerly listening to a gruesome story of a long-ago rebellion. When they protest, he tells them it's their fault that a competent tutor is no longer employed. If they would simply stop being so selfish with this  _nonsense_ , none of it would have been necessary.

They have the Dream again that night.

_They're running, because it's a running sort of dream, and the woods are still dark and the moon is still bright and the thread weaving across their path is still gold and She is still behind them, somewhere. She's looking for them._

_They don't want to be found._

_Vax turns, just his head, very briefly to see if he can get her position, but it's enough: he trips on the thread, tumbling hard into the dirt and fallen leaves. It takes Vex half a second longer to stop running, to turn to see him pushing himself up to sit on the ground, holding his middle like he's been winded. She crouches beside him, offering a hand up._

_"Brother," she says, and it echoes in an unnatural way. Vax looks up at her, his hand leaving his abdomen to take hers. As he reaches for her, they both see it: red, red blood on his palm and fingers, a rapidly spreading stain across his shirt._

They wake up, and Vax peels back the sheets to find his legs sticky with blood.

Swapping places becomes impossible soon after that.

* * *

 

 

Syngorn and Syldor grow impossible, and the Dream more frequent, until they're wandering dark woods together by night and exhausted by day. Vex is still good with figures and bookkeeping and their tutors shower their father with praise for his  _clever son_. (And they all politely ignore the  _for a half elf_  that lies unspoken at the end, but it burns under her skin all the same, like stepping on an ember she'd thought was simply ash.) Vax gives up studying in favour of haunted looks and daydreams that turn the corners of his mouth into a perpetual frown, which is never helped by the whispers about Syldor's  _sour daughter_.

They're sitting in Vax's room, him perched on the window seat in a dress Vex knows he only wears because she covets it, and her at his desk, a brief respite from tutors and lessons when they both feel it: a sharp, urgent sort of tug in their guts. Vax looks over at her, eyes wide.

They leave that night.

Sneaking out of Syldor's house is easy: he doesn't especially care where they are as long as it's not embarrassing him, and they'd half-planned this for a long time. They dress in black, close-fitting things that make them close enough to identical in the dark, and take only what they can easily carry. As they slip through the shadows and out of the gate of the city, past guards who either don't notice or simply don't care to, Vex turns to look back once.

"Do you think he'll even miss us," she says. It's not a question. Vax shrugs.

The moon, overhead, is bright.

* * *

 

 

At first, she thinks they've made some terrible error in geography, because Byroden is not where it ought to be.

Vax sifts through place after place, where houses ought to be and no longer are, running his hands through the oily ash that remains. He winds slowly through the former town, avoiding looking over at the place where the second house east of the baker's once stood.

Vex beelines for it.

It's utterly destroyed, the foundation stones the only part that could really be described as still standing, mapping out the walls where they grew up. She chokes down her sobs as she steps over what was once the threshold. There's almost nothing left to identify it as having been theirs except their memories of it, though she looks determinedly for some evidence that their mother still lives, that she didn't die in whatever calamity took this whole place.

Vax finds her, when he finally comes to the place, sitting in the dirt and the ash, stone faced as the tears pour out of her. He takes her gently by the shoulders and hauls her upright, to her feet.

"We can't stay here," he tells her, gently, and he hopes she hears  _I can't stay here_. Her expression cracks, worry flooding her face, and she nods.

He takes her hand, squeezing tight, and they run.

* * *

 

 

Neither would be able to say exactly when the woods they run through as they leave Byroden, the moon full and leading them along the path, become the woods from their Dream, but the twins become aware that they're in the Dream woods at some point concurrently with realizing they're  _tired_  of running.

"We could slow down," Vex suggests, huffing as the reality of running endlessly sets in.

"I don't know that that's a wise idea," Vax answers, equally winded. His calves and thighs burn. They've been running for an unknowable length of time. The moon has not shifted from its place in the sky, against all logic, always just ahead and slightly to the left.

"Do you think it's important that the moon hasn't moved?"

He can see her mouth twist into a frown as she looks up at the moon and then briefly at him. "I don't think it's  _good_ , no."

"Right. Me neither."

They run in silence for another minute; no forest sounds reach them, just the sound of laboured breaths. Slowly, together, they slow to a jog, then to a walk, and finally to a stop. At their feet, a golden thread crosses the path. Vax turns to her, eyebrows raised, and then steps forward to crouch down before it. He reaches down, pauses with his fingertips just above the thread.

"I always wanted to know what this was," he says as he touches the thread. It's warm to the touch but otherwise smooth and silky as expected, and as he touches it he feels a shiver run down his spine. For a moment, he thinks it has triggered some powerful magic; the woods go utterly dark save the thread under his fingertips and, they can now see, strung in an unfathomable pattern through the trees as far as they can see. Behind him, Vex gasps.

The light comes back as quickly as it left.

The moon has moved. Is moving. Is coming towards them, sinking to the path until it hovers at the height where a very tall person's face might be. Drawn out of the darkness come the impression of clothes, though they're indistinct, fitted around an equally unclear body. The white of the moon becomes a mask, or possibly it always was a mask, eyes simply dark holes and mouth drawn into a tight smile. Vax stands again, shuffling back to stand protectively in front of his sister.

"Oh, my children, how  _tangled_  you've gotten yourselves," says the moon, who is suddenly in front of them, just on the other side of the thread. The mask does not move. At this distance, they can see clearly that at least some of her mantle of darkness is black feathers, utterly without shine.

"We're not your children," Vex spits.

If a mask could look wounded, that would be how Vax would describe this now. "All the fate touched are my children." Vex reaches forward and puts her hand on Vax's elbow. "I've been keeping an eye on you for years, though you've spent all this time running and have gotten yourselves mixed up."

"What do you mean?"

The moon moves over the thread — not steps, because there are no feet to step, simply moves across and is suddenly very close. Vax presses back, Vex's fingers digging into the soft inner part of his elbow. "Let me fix this for you, children. You have your threads all in knots."

Everything goes black.

* * *

 

 

Vex wakes first to normal woods noises, birds and the rustle of leaves in the faint breeze. It's just past dawn, and they're slumped together in an untidy heap beside a very large tree. There's a chill in the air that the early sun hasn't yet had time to banish, and Vex presses closer to the warmth of her brother. Uncomfortable, she shifts, trying to find a better angle for her arms and legs. After a moment, she looks down at her uncooperative limbs in frustration and blinks.  _Oh_. 

She swallows hard, and moves her leg experimentally. This, finally, wakes Vax, who grumbles low in his throat. The sound of it startles him more awake, and he blinks at her uncomprehendingly. They shift away from each other, standing (a little wobbly, limbs unsure).

"Is this what she meant by 'all tangled up'?" Vex asks, and it's  _her voice_ , her voice coming out of her own mouth, the way she sounds in her thoughts and dreams.

"Does this mean I'm older than you, now?" Vax answers. She hits him in the chest, scowling.

After a long moment of grinning stupidly at each other, Vex's expression turns unsure. "Is this what you wanted? Does this make you happy?"

He blinks rapidly, eyebrows pulling together into a serious frown. "Yes, but not if you — if this isn't for  _you_ , I —"

She hiccups, producing a watery smile. "It's  _everything_." Vax smiles back, taking her hands and squeezing.

Overhead, though the sun blocks their view, the moon is very, very bright.


End file.
